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Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Turtles in the Morning

My wife woke me early in the morning on our first full day at the Radisson in Melbourne, Florida, and told me to come out on the balcony of our room. Thinking that perhaps she had noticed that the Bahamas were moving as well, I happily followed her out the sliding door, ready to roll my eyes in disbelief at her naivety. Sadly, my wife can tell the difference between a cruise ship and a massive island, so I remain the only member of our family to confuse those two. What my wife wanted to show me, was this:

A Mama sea turtle had made the long trek to the back of the beach to lay her eggs sometime during the night, and now was frantically burying the nest so that she could get back to the ocean before the sun came up.

OK, so maybe "frantically" is a bit of an exaggeration. It sure seemed like a lot of work for the turtle though. When we got to play with the turtles in Hawaii at Laniakea Beach, everything they did seemed so effortless. Apparently it's a very different story when they're up on the sand.

Eventually the turtle decided that the nest had enough sand piled on top of it, and turned to start making her way back towards the ocean. Alas, in the world of beach-going turtles, timing is everything. Just as our heroine made her break for the water, trouble came down the beach.

I'll admit that I was a little worried about how the dog would react to the turtle, but this was a well behaved dog. His owner walked him a fair distance away from the turtle, sat him down, and told him to stay. And he did. It was a very impressive display of self-control by the dog, and it left his owner free to watch and admire the beauty of the Mama turtle making her way back to the ocean...

...and to get in the way of my video.

This post is a part of Travel Photo Thursday over at Budget Travelers Sandbox. If you didn't get here from there, you should really head on over and check out some of the amazing travel pictures that get posted on Thursdays. I'll bet some of them would actually be able to change the angle on a video without it seeming like they were shooting from a vibrating bed.